Today marks the end of a significant era in my life, the project that started me into the career that I have today was sadly shutdown and turned off forever this evening.
10 years ago, in 2007 I had a phone call from Bruce, the founder of 2cu, enquiring about building a website service. I had made some promo CD business cards promoting our video services and along the line Bruce had picked one up. A few months later, He contacted me regarding an idea that he had had, a web portal for the medical professionals and their patients so they could interact with each other. The idea ended up growing to a full internet directory servicing every business and profession, starting in Northland and quickly growing through out New Zealand. My friend Matt had the skills required to make the back end of the website (or some, he learnt on the way), and I was to design the look and feel of the site.
After landing this new 2cu job and with new funds from other video jobs, myself, Matt and Stephen rented some office in Whangarei and we started a new company Concord Designs.
Concord Designs had a small amount of growth in the first 12 months, but, unfortunately the business was started at the brink of the global recession and we wound down the company after just two years. Over this time, 2cu would have been our largest client with constant on going work. Over this period of time and primarily through 2cu, I was roped in and became interested in HTML and CSS and then website development process.
The second revision / design for 2CU back in June 2010 (Found on waybackmachine)
When we wound down Concord Designs, I asked Bruce if 2cu would hire me directly… I had some crash courses by Matt in how to do some basic programming in Ruby, but, I actually didn’t know how to programme at all, I couldn’t even get my head around how a basic for loop worked.
I can remember sitting in my new office thinking ‘What have I got myself into!’. Somehow, by about the 3rd or 4th day of basically looking at my blank computer screen, the basic for loop just clicked in my head, and my understanding of everything else Ruby just came together just like that.
The third revision of 2cu as seen in 2013 (Found on waybackmachine)
2cu went on to have a number of revisions in this time and became New Zealands 3rd largest free Internet Directory after Finda and Yellow Pages with around 150,000 business listings. The search engine is still the fastest engine i have worked on and developed. Most search queries were outputted within 40-60ms and the page rendered to the end user within 80-100ms. Something I am proud of to this very day.
In October 2011 I left 2cu as a full time employee, but have kept it maintained including redesigning and rebuilding it a few times up until this moment. Today, after 1o year of work and commitment, I say good bye.
2cu is the reason I have the career that i have today, I owe a lot to the founders of 2cu, Bruce and Simon for taking me on and employing me. I sincerely Thank you.
I’ve added a few images of the how the system looked at the end (the 4th and final revision). I wish I had the very first version that was created in .net, actually, i probably would be horrified!
